Strategic Decision

Unlike many other decisions, strategic decision deals with the long-run future of the entire organization and has three characteristics:

1.  Rare: Strategic decision is unusual and typically have no precedent to follow;
2. Consequential: Strategic decision commits substantial resources and demands a great deal of commitment from people at all levels.
3. Directive: Strategic decision sets precedents for lesser decisions and future actions throughout the organization.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The Importance of HRM

This is important because some of the personnel mistakes you don’t want to make while managing. They include:

• Hire the wrong person for the job;
• Experience high turnover;
• Find your people not doing their best;
• Waste time with useless interviews;
• Have your company taken to court because of discriminatory actions;
• Have your company cited under occupational safety laws for unsafe practices;
• Have some employees think their salaries are unfair and inequitable relative to others in the organization;
• Allow a lack of training to undermine your department’s effectiveness;
• Commit any unfair labor practices.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

This is important because some of the personnel mistakes you don’t want to make while managing. They include:

• Hire the wrong person for the job;
• Experience high turnover;
• Find your people not doing their best;
• Waste time with useless interviews;
• Have your company taken to court because of discriminatory actions;
• Have your company cited under occupational safety laws for unsafe practices;
• Have some employees think their salaries are unfair and inequitable relative to others in the organization;
• Allow a lack of training to undermine your department’s effectiveness;
• Commit any unfair labor practices.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

International Codes of Environmental Conduct

A number of business organizations have developed codes of environmental conduct. Among the most important ones are the following:

• International Chamber of Commerce (ICC): The ICC developed the Business Center for Sustainable Development, 16 principles that identify key elements of environmental leadership and call on companies to recognize environmental management as among their highest corporate priorities.
• Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI): A group of over 20 companies dedicated to fostering environmental excellence, GEMI developed several environmental self assessment programs, including one that helps firms assess their progress in meeting the goals of the Business Center for Sustainable Development.
• Keidanren: This major Japanese industry association has published a  Global Environmental Charter that sets out a code of environmental behavior that calls on its members to be “good corporate citizens.”
• Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA): The U.S. based industry association developed Responsible Care: A Public Commitment, which commits its member-companies to a code of management practices, focusing on process safety, community awareness, pollution prevention, safe distribution, employee health and safety, and product stewardship. The group is working for the international adoption of these principles.
• CERES Principles: These are 10 voluntary standards developed by the Coalition of Environmentally Responsible economies that commit signatory firms to protection of the biosphere, sustainable use of natural resources, energy conservation, risk reduction, and other environmental goals.
• International Organization for Standards (ISO): ISO 14000 is a series of voluntary standards introduced in 1966 by the ISO, an international group based in Geneva, Switzerland, that permit companies to be certified as meeting global environmental performance standards.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Business Process Reengineering: Things to Remember

• Do not undertake reengineering of all processes simultaneously. Select only those which meet the following criteria:

1. Processes that require immediate attention;
2. Processes that will have significant impact on customers;
3. Processes which are most amenable to redesign.

• Communicate intensely to persuade people to accept and not resist the proposed changes.
• CEO must be seen to commit, at the minimum, 50 percent of his time.
• Set aggressive reengineering performance targets; incremental improvement targets will not create either urgency or excitement.
• Monitor progress and initiate corrective action.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

When Marketing doesn’t Work

Marketing has not measured up to expectations in many companies because management has concentrated on the trappings rather than the substance. When most executives talk about what their companies have done to become more marketing oriented, they usually point to such actions as:

• Declarations of support from top management in the form of speeches, annual reports, or talks to the investment community.
• Creation of a marketing organization, including appointment of a marketing head and product or market managers, transfer to marketing of the product development and service functions, establishment of a market research function, salespeople reassigned around markets, advertising function strengthened.
• Adoption of new administrative mechanisms, such as formal marketing planning approaches, more and better sales information, and revised information systems structured around markets rather than products.
• Increased marketing expenditures for staffing, training and development, advertising, marketing, research.

The point is not that these actions are useless, but that by themselves they are no guarantee of marketing success. Effective marketing requires a fundamental shift in attitude and values throughout the company so that everyone in every functional area places paramount importance on being responsive to market needs. The steps taken in most companies are not useful because they fail to accomplish this crucial shift in attitude. And without this shift in attitude, the most highly developed marketing operation cannot produce any real results.

Why have so few companies gone beyond the trappings to achieve the change in attitude that ensures substantive marketing? Frequently, one or more of these situations exist:

• In a surprising number of cases, management does not fully understand the marketing concept as it applies in its situation.
• In many other cases, management understands the implications of the marketing concept but has not committed itself to the actions and decisions needed to reinforce it.
• In almost every case, management has failed to install the administrative mechanisms necessary for effective implementation of the concept, especially into the non-marketing function.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Why have Contracts?

Contracts are probably a necessary device in any kind of market economy where goods and services are exchanged by people acting in their own interest. People might not enter into agreements that call for some future performance unless they know some means exist to force other people to honor their promises.

It is also true that it would probably be impossible to have an industrialized, market economy without contracts. A manufacturer would be unable to do the kind of planning necessary to run a business if he could not rely on agreements with suppliers to finish the raw materials he needs to make the products. Similarly a manufacturer might not be willing to commit herself to buy raw materials or hire employees if she could not rely on buyers’ promises to buy her products.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Outstanding Credit Culture

Just as individuals need a set of values (virtues) to guide their actions, systems should be designed to have a set of attributes which optimize their performance towards the goals. In this regard, the credit culture should have seven fundamental virtues:

1. Provide fundamental insight to help clients achieve their economic goals and solve their financial problems.
2. Responsive: the client deserves an answer as quickly as possible, even when the answer is no.
3. Flexible (creative): commit to finding better ways to meet the client’s financial needs.
4. Reliable: select clients as long-term partners and treat accordingly.
5. Manage risk with agreed upon limits. Clients do not want to fail financially, and you should want a bad loan.
6. Ensure an appropriate economic return to the firm for risk taken. The higher the risk, the higher the return the lower the risk, the lower the return. This is the expression of justice.
7. Create a “premium” for service delivery. The concept is to provide superior value to the client through outstanding service quality.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Truth Map

Truth map is an audit process designed to get to the bottom of an organization’s challenges, opportunities and concerns. It requires the involvement of a cross-section of individuals from right across the whole organization, as well as other relevant parties such as customers and suppliers. At the most simple level, it involves asking a lot of people a lot of questions—but that is only the beginning.

It is not what truth map is that makes it special but the reasons why it is being undertaken and the spirit in which it is carried out that are important.

You may use truth map in two different situations, firstly as part of truth and reconciliation in business, and secondly as the first stage of a standard message mapping exercise.

A truth map covers the same ground in either situation but covers it in different ways and for slightly different reasons.

• Use as part of a standard message mapping exercise (e.g., to assist a group of committed, enthusiastic individuals), the emphasis is on getting to the truth about future opportunities and challenges.
• Use as part of truth and reconciliation in business, the emphasis is on getting to the truth of past conflicts, reconciling differences and healing resentments before an organization is even able to move on and address the future. In this type of situation, significant effort must be applied to bring the different parties to the table before dialogue and debate can even start to take place.

In both these situations the actual mechanics are much the same. Both situations require methodical, systematic but sympathetic questioning.

In the interests of objectivity, the presence of an independent adjudicator can be highly beneficial or even essential.

Truth map allows everyone to be heard, it airs people’s grievances and, when done well, even the most hardened objectors can move from being on the outside peeing in, to being on the inside peeing out.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Leadership: The Uses of Power

Power can be used in many ways. Three outcomes potentially result when a leader tries to exert power—Commitment, Compliance, and Resistance. These outcomes depend on the leader’s base of power, how that base is operationalized, and the subordinate’s individual characteristics.

Commitment probably will result from the attempt to exercise power if the subordinate accepts and identifies with the leader. Such an employee will be highly motivated by requests that seem important to the leader. A committed subordinate will work just as hard as the leader to complete the project, even if that means working overtime.

Compliance means the subordinate is willing to carry out the leader’s wishes as long as doing so will not require extra effort and energy. Thus, the subordinate may work at a reasonable pace but refuse to work overtime, insisting that the job will still be there tomorrow. Many ordinary requests from a boss and the subsequent responses of subordinates fit this description.

Resistance occurs when the subordinate fights the leader’s wishes. A resistant subordinate may even deliberately neglect the project to ensure that it is not done as the leader wants.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.